Yesterday's Weapons Forums

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....Naj puška govori!....
.............deplorable typical "bitter clinger"....

astro - frikin - nomical for sure , wow

About a 1 in 3½ million chance I would guess.

The article said that about 6 million M-1 rifles were made in WW2 and the Korean War, and were used issued over and over again. Many were given away to allied foreign armies, so I don't know how that effects the odds.

I said what I did, because some were damaged,sunk, lost fore-ever, and I would think there may be 3 million plus in existance. That individual then stood 1 chance of the remander left to get that one gun out of those made.
If his was lost then he would have been out of the running unknowingly. Thus anyone that had one, and if that gun was still left, would have that 1 in 3 mil chance.

on top of that - have any of you opened one up and found data like that ? except on the swiss of course , i never have ........i did put my info in an old iver-johnson 38 i had as a kid

I'm still thinking about those odds. I ought to ask my son what he thinks, because he is a whiz at statistics and the variable input that can change the odds. As a rough estimate, 3 mil. sounds good to me, but I'd like to know how some of the other variables could change that number.

Let's stick to 3 mil. survival rate. Yet, of the 3 mil. left, if we consider just the rifles available to the CMP (even going back through all the inventory of the DCM sales), the odds would be significantly less because it excludes all the rifles given to foreign governments that haven't been returned (some never will be, like Vietnam for instance), and rifles already in the hands of civilians by some means.

The article said the man would have had better odds playing the lottery. I think they were overstating it there. Of course, it would depened on which lottery, but I just went online and checked the 53 number Powerball odds. The odds (with buying one ticket) of winning all 5 numbers and the Powerball are one in 120,526,770 which are much longer odds than an estimated one in 3 mil. for the rifle.

Still, I think it's remarkable that this man would get his issued rifle all those years later by such circuitous means. There is always the sceptic in me that wonders if this story was truly on the level. It would be more convincing if he had some kind of issue document or rifle rack card or something that backed it up. For example, I still have the issue document for the .45 Caliber Pistol, Model 1911 that my father was issued in WW2. I also have my rack card for my M16 from Vietnam. Who knows where the rifle is now; the North Vietnamese were known to sell those all over the world after 1975, in all the hot spots (El Salvador, Nicaragua, Colombia, Africa, Philippines, Indonesia, you name it).

Don, that's a funny thing. I did the same with my M-14 serial number back in basic training. I've seen it around here somewhere in the past few years. My M-14 was made by TRW.

I am sort of a math nut, and though remarkable, the odds would be 1 in 3 million for anybody....if the rifle was available. Just think if it was 100 marbles in a bag. The first 30 were destroyed......anyone that had a ticket from 1-30 of course would never get their marble. Those that had a number above 30 would have a 1 in 70 chance of pulling his marble. Thus the GI had a 1 in what ever remains of Garands as his odds.